Sidewalk Chalk
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: "He likes remembering." / Arabella and Ernie. Squibbiness. Pavement art. AU.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: **

Written for the QL competition (round eight, chaser two: "difficult" ; "The marks humans leave are too often scars." – John Green, _The Fault In Our Stars_ ; "The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe ; imperius curse)

Summary: Arabella and Ernie. Squibbiness. Pavement art. AU.

17 August 2014. Word Count: 1,108

**He likes remembering.**

* * *

**Sidewalk Chalk**

[-]

It's raining the first time they meet.

Before she had gone out that morning, Arabella had listened to the weather forecast on the telly. The forecaster had never mentioned anything about potential rain or a storm, which is why she's completely unprepared and underdressed for the wet weather. (It is London, though, so perhaps she should have known better.)

He comes to a stop beside her rain-blurred picture. She had chosen to draw today's sidewalk art right at the entrance to Hyde Park. Ernie doesn't know what the picture is supposed to be since the rain washed away some of the more important details, but he doesn't tell her this.

Instead, he smiles at Arabella and offers her his rain slicker whilst simultaneously dropping a couple Sickles into her donations jar.

He disappears back into the grey landscape of inner-city London before Arabella has the time to protest and hand back his jacket.

x

"How did you know I knew about the magical world?"

Ernie flinches away from the outrageously loud voice in his ear. He relaxes a bit when he realises it's Arabella speaking to him.

They're in Leicester Square now. Today, Arabella has set herself up immediately outside of the construction zone for one of the buildings near the M&M shop. It's not pouring rain, but the skies are kind of overcast. Her sidewalk art is in the shade. Ernie can't tell what the picture she drew on the ground is supposed to be, but he rationalises that it's probably because the shadows are playing tricks with the light.

"Hey, you," she says and snags his arm as he walks by her sectioned-off bit of pavement. "The Sickles. You dropped them in my jar last week. How'd you know I wasn't just a Muggle?"

He shrugs and covertly slips out of her grip. She doesn't notice that he removed all body contact between them; she's too busy gesturing wildly as she speaks.

" – another trip to Gringotts which is exactly what I _don't_ need right now, so if you could just make donations in pounds or Euros, that'd be great. Cheers."

He nods, takes another five seconds to try to decipher her sidewalk chalk, and then puts a few Euro notes in her glass jar of donations before he leaves to catch his six o'clock bus ride home.

It takes Arabella a few more moments this time to realise that she forgot to return his rain slicker.

x

They don't see each other for two weeks. London's a big city and has lots of lost souls; they aren't a special and unique love story in Fate's eyes.

Arabella busies herself with graphitising the pavement all over London. Ernie sticks to his daily schedule and doesn't stray far from the strict boundaries of home, work, and then back to home.

He is reminded of her existence every time he sees little snippets of her artwork as he crosses London on his public transportation commute. Seeing her pavement art – or what's left of it after London drizzles – helps him remember that she's real and not a figment of his imagination.

It's getting more and more difficult for Ernie to distinguish between what's real and not real but something about her art triggers something in his mind and temporarily improves his memory.

(He likes remembering.)

x

"Oh, good. You're back."

There's a stranger tugging at his arm but she's looking at him with an intense sort of familiarity, so Ernie figures that she must know him. He willingly lets himself be led out of the flow of pedestrian traffic and off to the side to admire her ground art that's been drawn in front of a coffee shop on Tottingham Court Road.

She tilts her head and a wave of brown hair cascades over her shoulders. She pouts and stares at the jumble of colours on the ground. "Something doesn't look right with this picture. I was hoping you could tell me what's wrong with it."

He rubs the back of his neck and considers her picture. He doesn't know what the hell it's supposed to be, honestly. It looks like elephants having butt sex. Ernie's pretty sure that is not what Arabella – right, that's what her name is! – intended when she drew. Then again, he thinks that perhaps she never has a clear idea of what she's trying to draw because if he's not mistaken, none of her artwork resembles anything normal.

When Ernie doesn't say anything after a while, Arabella shrugs and stops looking at her psychedelic eyesore she considers to be art.

"I still have your rain slicker," she tells him conversationally. "Not with me, but I can give it back to you the next time we see each other. I think that'll be on Tuesday. I paint at Piccadilly, then."

Ernie wonders if "I still have your rain slicker" is supposed to be code for something because he doesn't remember giving Arabella a rain coat. He's pretty sure that this is the first time that they've met.

Arabella pokes his arm. "Tuesday, then? It's a date." She winks and then gives him a tiny push so that the sea of London pedestrians swallows him up and carries him away to other sidewalk shores.

x

There's a little church in Godric's Hollow whose bells are clanging with the echoing sound of death.

It's raining outside. Arabella's chalk-painting; Ernie is sitting on the ground beside her and watching. She's telling him stories, lots and lots of stories. The stories are about a boy and girl who are supposed to receive letters by owl to a castle called Hogwarts. Apparently Hogwarts is an institute that teaches magic to witches and wizards. The story ends there – Arabella says that she doesn't know the rest.

She then starts another story. This one is about a boy and girl who have terrible families. The girl is abandoned by her parents when they find out that she doesn't have any magical abilities. The boy can do magic except for one day he got in the middle of his fighting parents and a fatal combination of _Imperio_ and _Obliviate_ made him permanently mentally unstable and created a brain tumour. He gets stripped of his magic status and is labelled a Squib, just like her. The girl ends up drawing pictures on the sidewalk with chalk to pass her useless days while the boy keeps her company. His days are numbered.

Ernie thinks these are awful and depressing stories. To change the subject, he points at her pavement picture and is surprised to see that he can actually make out an image for once.

[-]


End file.
